Calling all students! Are you currently looking for an opportunity to get more involved and network with leaders in the Florida geospatial industry? If so, the perfect opportunity has arrived to be in on the ground floor of the ASPRS Florida Region Student Advisory Council (FL-SAC). The FL-SAC has been commissioned by Florida Region President, Brian Murphy, to provide all university and college students in the State of Florida and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico with a venue to participate and organize geospatial activities.

The initial proposed FL-SAC structure is similar to the national Student Advisory Council (SAC) of which I have had the pleasure of being a part of for the past 2 years. As the outgoing SAC Chair, I have had the opportunity to voice the opinions of ASPRS students at National ASPRS Board meetings, participate in national conferences as a student assistant, organize student mapping competitions, strengthen ASPRS student chapter relationships, share ASPRS student-related activities via our student blog, and compile employment opportunities for job seekers through the Virtual Career Expo (ASPRS login required).

By connecting students from campuses across Florida and Puerto Rico, I look forward to replicating National SAC activities on the regional level through my FL-SAC position as the incoming Chair. These activities can include collaborating on a future GeoLeague Challenge team, forming a Student Map Competition team for the upcoming San Antonio conference, organizing an online technical meeting similar to this recent Eastern Great Lakes Region symposium, or creating a webinar series to share student research projects. Having attended many professional webinars and participated in numerous classes as part of the University of Florida’s distance education Geomatics program, I am comfortable with the video conferencing and virtual meeting space technology that will enable us to collaborate beyond our physical campuses. For those of us able to travel, I look forward to face to face meeting and networking opportunities such as the Florida Region ASPRS Annual Meeting in St. Pete Beach on August 23^rd.

If you are interested in getting involved with the FLSAC in any capacity, please contact our ASPRS Florida Region faculty advisor, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , or myself at any time. We look forward to growing the ASPRS FLSAC regional student body with you!

ASPRS & ISPRS students participating in the 2011 ISPRS Advanced LiDAR Data Processing & Applications Workshop and Summer School are shown above. Six ASPRS Florida Region students from the University of Florida traveled to the week-long event in Fayetteville, North Carolina.